IBISA—a Luxembourg-based start-up which builds, distributes, and operates climate insurance solutions for agriculture stakeholders—has raised seed funding from Ankur Capital, an early-stage venture capital fund focused on transformative technologies in deeptech and climate tech.

Founded in 2019, IBISA started its operations in India with the DHAN Foundation to provide parametric insurance against drought coverage in Tamil Nadu. A statement said IBISA is scaling its operations in India with operations in Odisha, Karnataka and Telangana for coverage against excess rainfall, excess wind speed and drought. In February, it opened a registered office in Bengaluru.

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Quoting Ritu Verma, Partner at Ankur Capital, the statement said the unavailability of data has hampered the growth of the agricultural insurance industry in developing countries for decades. Legacy crop insurance involved long manual processes making them impractical for developing markets where smallholder farming is the norm, and parametric insurance has historically been unviable due to the lack of detailed climate-related datasets. “We are excited to partner with IBISA to transform the scale of available parametric insurance options in countries like India with a vast addressable market,” Ritu Verma said.

Ukraine war impact

Maria Mateo Iborra, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of IBISA, said farming is an integral part of the societal and economic infrastructure. The impact that the war in Ukraine is having on food prices and food security seriously underscores the importance of global agriculture.

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“With IBISA, we sought to create technology that would help reduce costs for the active players in the insurance space. Finding a way to responsibly protect farmers in the event of extreme weather, by slashing distribution and operating costs, making it affordable to many groups in the value chain. And it is no small challenge. But we are already seeing results. A small evidence of our success is the fact that when the Philippines was hit by Typhoon Odette in December 2021, our insurance partner, CLIMBS, was able to do payouts within 10 days after the typhoon hit Philippines with IBISA’s weather protection coverage in place,” Maria Mateo Iborra said.

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